Brief Story Line
Story was set in the end of 2020 when Covid-19 was affecting the economy of the whole world, including South Korea. Kim Gun-woo (Woo Do-hwan - The Divine Fury, The King: Eternal Monarch TV series etc), an amateur boxer & former marine had to do various part time jobs to help her mother So-yeon (Yoon Yoo-sun - The Interest of Love TV series etc) paying large debts. During a rookie boxing tournament, Gun-woo had to fight Hong Woo-jin (Lee Sang-yi - Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, Once Again TV series etc) in the final but they somehow became best friends after that fight.
When So-yeon became indebted to a major loan shark group led by the vicious Kim Myeong-gil (Park Sung-woong - Hostage: Missing Celebrity, Unlock My Boss TV series etc), Gun-woo who tried to protect his mother, and Woo-jin were soon caught up in the fight against these illegal operations. Both of them later met with former loan shark named Choi Tae-ho (Heo Joon-ho - Escape from Mogadishu, Why Her TV series etc) who had turned his life around and his apprentice Hyeon-ju (Kim Sae-ron - A Girl at My Door, Secret Healer TV series etc). Together they tried their best to stop Myeong-gil and free the common people who had been cheated by the loan sharks.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series.
End of Brief Story Line
Like I said above, I was intrigued to watch this series when I found out there were lots of action. So when I started the first episode, I was looking forward to those parts, but it turned out aside from the early boxing matches, the rest was going at rather slow pace showing the condition back in those days while introducing the characters and a bit of background story of illegal loan sharks. Not until I got to the final 10 minutes or so that the episode felt alive with some well crafted hand to hand fight scenes. From that moment on, I was excited to see what would come next.
As I watched with high anticipation in second episode, I felt the pace going slow again. But since I already got a glimpse of what they could do and there were more characters development, I was still eager to wait for the good part. And it certainly did not disappoint since there were more and more fight sequence in subsequent episodes which made me in awe of the main cast ability in those scenes. By the time I reached 6th episode (which I think was my favorite as it was quite dramatic and amazing), I was going on and on to my wife saying she should watch it. Although the 7th episode was different from my expectation, but the finale was worth the wait.
The series overall has 8 episodes. Till the time I post this, there was no indication if there would be a second season. But the ending seemed pretty conclusive to me, so even if it is not renewed, I am still satisfied. From what I read, this was based on webtoon of the same title by Jeong Chan. The setting of year 2020 when Covid-19 was still at its peak was a nice touch as it made the background story more believable. They were also quite detail in term of showing the pandemic condition like the physical distancing, mask wearing and many other stuff which made them look realistic.
The lead cast of Woo Doo-hwan and Lee Sang-yi were quite perfect in their roles to my opinion, with their close relationship as best buddies look genuine and not overly done. I also like the appearance of Heo Joon-ho as the patient Mr. Choi, but the most convincing performance to me was definitely Park Sung-woong as the ruthless & sadistic Kim Myeong-gil. There was a surprising story development of Kim Sae-ron's character Hyeon-ju which apparently coincided with her offscreen trouble. Aside from those names, there were plenty of recurring appearances of other people whom I believed would be familiar faces for fans of South Korean drama, such as Siwon (My Fellow Citizens, She Was Pretty TV series etc) as Mr. Hong, Kim Min-jae (Do You Like Brahms?, Poong, the Joseon Pyschiatrist TV series etc) as detective Jae-min and many others.
Overall to me this series was exciting with its greatly done fight sequences using the boxing technics to defeat the enemies and the scenes were always intense and suspenseful (even though it was kind of weird that the bad guys did not use more lethal weapons). The story about loan sharks ruining the lives of small business owners and the way they cheat simple minded people were well told and the actors and actresses did a decent job in portraying their characters. So if you like this kind of series with many hand to fight fights in almost every episode, then you would enjoy this one. Just be ready for some graphic violence that might be disturbing (especially in 5th episode), but other than that, I thought it was still reasonable and certainly entertaining.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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